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Summary of the impact

A key challenge for Western policy makers and legal practitioners in
formulating justice and security responses to mass atrocity in the African
Great Lakes region is to understand the political, social and cultural
causes of conflict, and the manner in which past conflicts can be resolved
and potential future conflicts prevented. Phil Clark's research sheds
much-needed light on these issues, and assesses the nature and impact of
both local and international transitional justice responses. This research
has prompted his active engagement with international judicial processes
and debates on aid policy, encouraging international actors to be more
aware of local dynamics around conflict and justice, with the wider aim of
maintaining the vulnerable stability of post-conflict nations in Africa.

Underpinning research

Dr Phil Clark is Reader in Comparative and International Politics at
SOAS, where he has researched conflict and post-conflict issues in Africa,
specifically questions of peace, truth, justice and reconciliation in the
African Great Lakes region, since 2010.

Clark publishes widely on political, social and legal responses to
genocide and mass crimes in Central Africa, particularly community-based
approaches to accountability and reconciliation, themes widely explored in
The Gacaca Courts, Post-Genocide Justice and Reconciliation in Rwanda:
Justice without Lawyers of 2011(output a). This monograph examines
how the model of traditional Rwandan conflict resolution, the gacaca
community justice system, was mobilised in 2001 to prosecute suspected
perpetrators of the 1994 genocide. The system allowed respected
individuals elected by local populations to prosecute cases heard in
open-air before community members. The majority of adult Rwandans
participated in gacaca, yet the prohibition of lawyers from proceedings
generated widespread international criticism of the courts' legitimacy.
Employing original empirical evidence and interviews with hundreds of
international, national and community stakeholders, Clark counters this
scepticism, arguing that, while not without problems, mass participation
in `truth-telling' and accountability has greatly facilitated
reconciliation. The book offers invaluable insights into a unique approach
to post-genocide justice and raises the important question of whether
Rwanda's experience might provide a model for other African nations
seeking post-conflict resolution.

Clark's work, drawing heavily on extensive fieldwork, also investigates
international approaches to post-atrocity accountability and
reconciliation in Central Africa. In output b, Clark argues that the
International Criminal Court's (ICC) top-down approach is ill-suited to
address conflicts in which non-state actors, including tens of thousands
of everyday citizens, played a significant role. He proposes that
traditional justice systems implemented in Rwanda and in post-civil war
Uganda, in contrast, promote forgiveness and heal communities riven by
violence by holding lower-level, local actors accountable. Similarly,
output c critiques ICC practices in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC)
and Uganda, asserting that the need to achieve results in the short-term
has seen it fail to prosecute serving members of government responsible
for atrocities, while also overlooking the capacity of local forms of
justice to address such crimes. This approach, Clark contends, has made
local populations suspicious of the ICC's legitimacy and has serious
implications for the rule of law in countries where, rather than being
punished, political actors guilty of serious crimes are ignored or even
empowered by the ICC's operations.

Clark's work also controversially questions the practices of human rights
groups and UN agencies (Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch (HRW),
and UN Groups of Experts) in Central African post-conflict resolution. In
output d, Clark argues that, with their narrow conception of justice and
accountability, and questionable evidence-gathering biased by political
agendas, such groups fail to consider specific transitional contexts and
customary practices in African countries, and thus undermine the execution
of justice therein. Ultimately, Clark's research proposes that, for
genuine, long-term reconciliation to occur, international actors must
develop a nuanced, country-specific understanding of how conflict plays
out and is resolved.

References to the research

b. "Addressing Atrocity at the Local Level: Community-Based Approaches to
Transitional Justice in Central Africa." In Morality, Jus Post Bellum
and International Law, edited by L. May, 45-77. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2012.

c. "Chasing Cases: The ICC and the Politics of State Referral in the
Democratic Republic of Congo and Uganda." In The International
Criminal Court and Complementarity: From Theory to Practice, edited
by C. Stahn & M. El Zeidy, 1180-1203. Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 2011.

d. "Creeks of Justice: Debating Post-Atrocity Accountability and Amnesty
in Rwanda and Uganda." In Amnesty in the Age of Human Rights
Accountability: Comparative and International Perspectives, edited
by Francesca Lessa and Leigh A. Payne, 210-37. New York, Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2012.

e. "Rwanda" and "Gacaca Courts." In The Encyclopaedia of Transitional
Justice, edited by Lavinia Stan and Nadia Nedelsky. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2012.

Details of the impact

Clark's expertise has been widely solicited by international governments
and organisations, enabling his significant contribution to international
judicial processes and debates. Notably, Clark provided legal advice to an
ICC trial, at which he successfully challenged the Prosecution's weak
evidence base against Callixte Mbarushimana, the executive secretary of
the Forces Démocratiques de Libération du Rwanda (FDLR), a DRC-based rebel
group (1, below). In 2010, Mbarushimana had been indicted by the ICC for
crimes against humanity and war crimes committed in the DRC. In September
2011, Clark wrote an expert report for the Defence. Drawing on the
publications discussed in Section 2, Clark's report noted the
Prosecution's heavy reliance on second-hand evidence published by human
rights observers, including HRW and the UN Group of Experts on the DRC,
and challenged the Prosecution's attribution of criminal responsibility to
the FDLR (and Mbarushimana) on the basis of witnesses' claims that their
attackers spoke Kinyarwanda, the national language of Rwanda, the FDLR's
alleged home. The report was central to defence evidence in Mbarushimana's
pre-trial hearing in The Hague, and was debated at great length. In
December 2011, the ICC dismissed charges against Mbarushimana on the
grounds of insufficient evidence. Clark's support of the Defence was
motivated not by criticism of the ICC, but by the poor quality of the
evidence brought by the Prosecution, which Clark considered indicative of
a wider problem: the fallibility of evidence gathered without specific
understanding of the nature of conflict in the Great Lakes. For Clark, the
use of such evidence in this case would have further undermined the
legitimacy of the ICC, thereby undermining post-conflict justice and
reconciliation in the region (2).

Clark is also an expert in an on-going case with the UK Crown Prosecution
Service (CPS), which seeks the extradition to Rwanda of five genocide
suspects living in the UK. Using Clark's monograph as the primary source
for information on fair trial standards in Rwanda, senior CPS lawyers
agreed that there were sufficient grounds to pursue the extradition cases,
having lost similar cases on appeal in the High Court in 2009. They were
particularly convinced by Clark's demonstration that genocide suspects
routinely receive fair trials in Rwanda's gacaca system, and that
significant shortcomings exist in the methodologies of organisations such
as HRW (upon whose testimony the 2009 High Court judgements hinged). Clark
has since conducted further research and compiled an expert report for a
second set of extradition hearings in March 2014. The CPS is now
considering actions against other genocide suspects in the UK on the basis
of Clark's publications and his report, the latter of which was shared
with prosecutors pursuing extraditions in Norway and the International
Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda in Tanzania. These extraditions would mean
that genocide suspects will be prosecuted in Rwanda by Rwandans, the
outcome of which will have important implications for strengthening
domestic law in Rwanda, itself fundamental to maintaining stability in the
Great Lakes region.

Additionally, Clark has provided substantial expert advice to the UK
government. In 2011, he submitted written and oral evidence to the House
of Commons Select Committee on International Development which was
re-evaluating donor policy to Rwanda, Burundi and the DRC. Clark's
invitation arose from his publications and previous appointments to brief
the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, DFID and UK ambassadors and High
Commissioners to Rwanda, Uganda and the DRC. Clark's evidence criticised
the government's proposed withdrawal of aid to Burundi, especially in
light of planned substantial aid increases to Rwanda and the DRC, and
advocated regional rather than state-based donor assistance in order to
advance post-conflict re-building and maintain stability in the Great
Lakes as a whole. This stance was eventually adopted by the Select
Committee, whose report to Parliament called for a regional approach (as
proposed by Clark) and exercised pressure on senior FCO and DFID policy
makers (3, 4 and 5).

Similarly, in November 2012, Clark provided written evidence to the House
of Commons International Development Committee on aid to Rwanda (6). Clark
questioned the decisions of the UK, US, Germany, the Netherlands and
Sweden to withdraw or partially withhold aid to Rwanda, decisions based
primarily on a UN Group of Experts on the DRC report accusing the Rwandan
government of supporting the M23 rebel group in eastern DRC. Clark
highlighted the significant methodological problems with this and similar
reports, and questioned whether a single source should be relied upon so
extensively in determining policy. Clark's work prompted questions from
two MPs to the Development Secretary, Justine Greening, during the
Committee meeting, and was further discussed in a May 2013 briefing paper
to the House of Commons on political and security developments in Rwanda.

Internationally, Clark has advised the US State Department, the Danish,
Australian, Norwegian, Sudanese, Swedish, and Ugandan governments, the
ICC, International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, UN Group of Experts on
the DRC, HRW and Crisis Group on conflict-related issues in Rwanda,
facilitating important policy and legal discussions with practitioners.

Clark has had a clear influence on international discussion and debate on
conflict and reconciliation in Africa. This is corroborated by his
frequent engagement with the media: Since 2010, he has written nine op-eds
for the Guardian, New York Times (7), International Herald
Tribune, Huffington Post (10), The Australian and the BBC
(9) and CNN (8) websites, and has been quoted no fewer than 85 times in
broadcasts and articles by a wide range of international agencies (11,
12).